


Gunshots Don't Heal Overnight

by GhostyBat



Category: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
Genre: Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 08:22:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26350048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostyBat/pseuds/GhostyBat
Summary: A missing scene from Millard's perspective after he was shot.
Relationships: Emma Bloom & Millard Nullings, Millard Nullings & Enoch O'Connor
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Gunshots Don't Heal Overnight

Emma wasn’t letting Millard help with the boats. At all.  


She had made him sit off to the side like a lump of sod as the others dragged their few remaining belongings and packed them into their little boats, making trips back and forth from the house, down, down, down, to the docks. Even Claire and Olive were doing their part, Claire running to and fro with boxes full of canned food, her curls bouncing up and down behind her, and Olive dragging a trunk of clothes bigger than herself over to Bronwyn who stacked them in their boat, a look of grim determination on her face.  


And everyone was shooting him looks, funny as that may sound, as they always missed his eyes, landing squarely on his bandages. Hugh’s bees would flitter about his ears, zipping away when he waved them off, the little spies had nothing to see anyway. Surprisingly, even Enoch seemed to care, he would look up from sorting out his belongings to stare at Millard for brief moments, turning his head back down before anyone could notice his apparent concern. Everyone was watching, but Emma was hovering. It was so obvious that she didn’t even bother hiding it. In this case, she was an even bigger nanny than Bronwyn. She had grounded him to her boat and absolutely refused to let him even lift a finger to help, growling at him if he even appeared to be getting up, the blasted cloth giving him away each time. He would’ve ditched it if it had not been literally keeping him from bleeding out in the boat. Though he would be a liar if he’d said he hadn’t tried, sending Miss Bloom into near hysterics.  


He suspected that she felt some sort of guilt for what had happened, though she had no good reason to. She hadn’t even been close to him when it happened, it’s not like she could’ve stopped a bullet. Emma was just that sort of person, adopting all of the bad things that happened and placing them squarely on her own shoulders, bearing them like a self-made scapegoat. It had been Millard’s own recklessness that landed him here and while he didn’t regret offering to help, he was extremely embarrassed that he had been rendered useless in the first few moments of the attempt. Emma’s guilt was because of him, and his own guilt came from making her feel guilty. The irony was not lost upon him.  


So eventually he had given in to her harping with grim compliance, the pills made him feel drowsy and nauseous anyway, even if they had temporarily warded off the blinding pain in his shoulder. Replacing the sharp daggers was a dull throbbing that beat to the time of his heart, which was so loud and irritating he almost wished it would stop. Moving made his head spin and even the slightest sensation anywhere near his wound was amplified ten-fold, he flinched away at the smallest touch and had to bite his tongue from crying out.  


Even with all this misery, he felt worse not helping. Everyone was tired and miserable and here he was, sitting off to the side, uselessly. Nursing a wound that he earned not in combat, but in stupid recklessness. How foolish it was, thinking he was the smart one, that he had more sense than the rest of them and could help. He hadn’t even made it ten feet before being taken out of the game completely, having to be dragged over land and sea by his unfortunate friends who not only had to worry about him bleeding out into the ocean, but being shot themselves. Ift they hadn’t been so focused on him, Bronwyn could’ve taken down Dolan in a second sans an injury to their headmistress and the loss of Miss Avocet. And he wouldn’t have to sit there with all this guilt weighing on his back.  


And here came Emma, with that god-damn distraught look on her face, her brows furrowed and her fists clenched around her damp dress. She stepped on tiptoes through the water, trying in vain to keep her flats somewhat dry, and came up to the side of the boat, tapping him gently on his uninjured shoulder. “Hey, Mill, you doing okay?”  


When he took a moment to answer, she worried her lip, already turning to call Enoch, their very unhappy, unwilling, “doctor”.  


“ I‘m fine,” he mumbled, shaking the bottle of painkillers in his lap with a wry grin, Stop worrying. I’m not going to suddenly drop dead.”  


Her face twisted into a grimace.  


“Ok, poor choice of words,” he added with a careful shrug, setting the bottle down next to him.  


Shaking her head and muttering something obscene under her breath, Emma stalked away from the boat, going to grab the maps and gather everyone up for their departure. She’d have them going around in circles for hours with her shoddy navigating, the girl had hardly ever used a map. Of course, ever the worry wart, she had said that he was to rest and under no circumstances was he to be allowed to handle directions. Millard would normally argue to the ends of the earth about how he could navigate in any state, but his debating skills at this moment were mostly just grumbling and groaning. They would be sitting next to each other anyway, he would just give her tips when she struggled and feign sleep otherwise. Hopefully the water wouldn’t be rough, he got motion sick easy.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So, I actually wrote this about a year ago and figured I might as well post it 'cause I would've wanted to read something like this. Millard should not have been as okay as he was in the book! He got shot! Anyway, I also have the boat scene from his perspective but I'm debating on whether or not to post it. I guess if people like this I'll just add it on!


End file.
